The Power of Play Poster Series

The Child’s Play: Learning that comes naturally information sheet, produced jointly by the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Education (CEECD) and the Strategic Knowledge Cluster on Early Childhood Education (SKC-ECD), describes play as:

A form of learning

Simple, creative, spontaneous, flexible with no specific goals

Started and led by your child

An activity that should be part of all children’s life

The info sheet notes that social, cognitive and physical play accounts for around 20% of most young children’s energy and time, helps a child develop the skills they will need to learn to read, write and communicate verbally, and allows a child to develop social skills (problem solving, cooperation) to express stresses and problems.

The info sheet focuses on four areas:

Interacting with your child during play to foster imagination, creativity and language-related skills

Creating a secure play environment adapted to your child’s physical and intellectual needs

The importance of free play for your child - stimulating activities do not always mean structured ones

Play fighting and use of war toys - this form of play is common, and, within limits, can be beneficial to a child’s development

Ideas to help encourage and manage creative play are offered for each of the four areas.

The Power of Play poster series, produced by the government of Newfoundland Labrador, includes six picture posters of children in play situations.

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This publication was produced by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House with funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors/researchers and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Public Health Agency of Canada or Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House.